Thoughts on Gay Marriage

Seems like the debate my postings here on the Huffington Post about gay marriage have reverberated beyond. Among the various articles and interviews about it all is an interview just published on the Patheos web site.

Patheos is one of the more interesting resources I have seen dealing with religion and spiritual belief. It is an elaborate and thoughtful attempt to use the potential of the Web to foster dialog between spiritual practices.

The interview with me is here:
A Gay Jeremiah Exhorts a Movement to Remember Its Roots

Comments

[johnbdonovan]

My politics are expansive and inclusive because they encompass the well-being of all human beings, who deserve both a mother and a father to balance their psychological development growing up. They're not limited to the desires of a minuscule percentage of homosexuals who want to be married (homosexuals themselves only being 2 or 3 percent of the population.

[LeftRight]

Your politics are NARROW and EXCLUSIVE because you choose not to allow those who love each other enjoy all the same rights as you.

And as for you statements about children, kids don't require a male parent and a female parent, they require parents who are both loving and THERE! Honestly, a single parent household would be FINE were the single parent able to work just one job and provide for their family!

[johnbdonovan]

A male parent provides an emphasis on fairness and discipline, a female parent on nurturance. A female parent is especially important in the early years, the male in the later years of childhood. There are exceptions to these generalizations, but the jury has already rendered its verdict in areas where the male parent is largely missing, and it's that boys have run-ins with the law at dramatically higher levels and girls become promiscuous at dramatically higher levels. As for single-parent families, that's constant and continuous chaos.

[StevenKeirstead]

Polls in the US in 1996 and Great Britain in 2008 showed the percentage of the population willing to admit they are homosexuals is 5% and 6% respectively. Given the likelihood that many gay people would not tell a random stranger their sexual orientation, these are likely to be underestimates. So at least 1 in 20 people are gay, and Kinsey's measurement of 1 in 10 is not impossibly unrepresentative.

But regardless of the numbers, gay men, lesbians and transgendered folk all deserve to be treated as human beings. Everyone deserves equal access to jobs they are qualified for, health care, housing that they can afford, to be protected equally by law from violence and discrimination. In many states in the US it is still perfectly legal for an employer to fire or refuse to hire an employee for being gay, still legal to refuse to sell a house or rent an apartment to a gay couple or individual. I'm lucky never to have encountered these abuses, but they do happen, and that is one reason people to continue to fight for anti-discrimination laws in many states at the same time some other states have the luxury of recognizing marriage rights to gays and lesbians. And by luxury I don't mean the right of marriage equality itself, but the politics of considering it in state legislatures and courts.

[SeanGardner]

Your HUFFPO pieces on gay marriage from December '08 were among the best on the topic. I sincerely appreciated your contributions.

[adoantarel]

With all due respect, it seems presumptuous for you to tell us what the gay movement is or should be about. To say being gay is about rejecting hegemony is your perspective, but you don't have the right to tell me what being gay is. Being gay is a part of who I am.

Have you not considered that your attitude is a result of your rejection from the "hegemony", as you call it. You felt spurned and decided to spurn them back. It seems similar, to me, to the young gay men who, when coming out, become overly effeminate as a rejection of the hypermasculine culture that they feel rejects them. I did this at first, but over time moderated and accepted that I can incorporate many different aspects into my personality. I can be compassionate but still strong. I can love and want to protect someone.